Dead to Rights II: Hell to Pay

BonusStage

Many of you will undoubtedly find Dead to Rights II too unoriginal and repetitive to give a chance, but from my perspective this game is a great rental experience worth checking out on a rainy weekend.

Xequted

The meat (ahem) of the game is quite fun. It’s the fist fights, the repetition, and camera problems that plague it enough to keep it from being more then average.

Worth Playing

This is not a game that anyone will accuse of vast depth. It revels in action-movie cliches, from Jack’s nearly-constant bad puns (“This ought to heat things up,” he says, grabbing a Molotov cocktail) to the near-invisible story to the waves of idiot cannon-fodder who populate each stage.

IGN

Provides some mindless shooting with all of the clichéd elements you've come to expect from a third person action game.

GameSpot

So if you like playing video games to release tension, and you don't care about good stories or online multiplayer modes or any of that stuff, definitely rent this one or something.

Inside Gamer Online

It's more of an anti-expansion that removes more features than it supplements.

DailyGame

This should’ve been more than just slightly better than the original. Rent it before buying at full price.

Official Xbox Magazine

Dumb fistfighting sequences from the original are back. [June 2005, p.74]

Game Chronicles

If you’re hard up for an action-shooter then you might want to check this out when it hits the $20 bargain bin, but otherwise I’d have to recommend you skip this latest installment in the Jack Slate saga.

G4 TV

On the other hand, if all you want out of your video game is a bloody binge, Dead to Rights II is the gaming equivalent of sitting alone in a dark room and downing shot after shot of cheap, hard liquor. If you’re in the mood, it gets the job done just fine.

Yahoo! Games

Much like Dante and "Devil May Cry 2," let's hope this is just a sophomore slump, and this series will come back stronger in a future installment. If not, it truly is dead to rights.

GamePro

Unfortunately, Dead to Rights II maintains its predecessor's graphics and camera glitchiness.

1UP

What seemed really cool back when Namco first announced the original Dead to Rights -- the sweet disarming animations -- just aren't enough to carry another repetitive action game for more than a few levels.

GameZone

The gameplay is still repetitive and uninspired, the graphics still weak and the storyline still overly cheesy.

My Gamer

However, if you’re craving narrative depth, sound reasoning, and believable motivation to sit firmly behind your violent malevolence, you might want to hold off for something better.

TeamXbox

Unless you are an avid K9 unit fan, a glutton for mediocre shooters, or rich, your hard-earned dollars could be better spent elsewhere.

Xbox Solution

Dead to Rights II doesn’t exactly disappoint me, as the first installment was really no better, but I would’ve liked to see a more marked improvement after this development time.

eToychest

This is a game that has one virtue to call its own (i.e., highly redundant, brainless action in a single vein), but it lacks the sense of style and the production values that saved the first game from complete obscurity.

Xbox World Australia

Save your cash for better games.

MS Xbox World

The game has none of the style or effectiveness of other similar games and as I’ve said several times in this review, the whole thing smells of generic.

Armchair Empire

A fairly simplistic game with a very basic premise: kill anything that gets in your way.

Gamer's Hell

Definitely a step backwards in the series. By removing the little mini-games and scrapping whatever parts of a story that were present, the latest title destroyed any credibility or potential it may have had.

TotalGames.net

Dead To Rights II is confused. It's an action title where you spend the majority of your time waiting. It's a videogame where you'll out-swear the gritty characters onscreen. It's a sequel that's not as good as its predecessor.

Game Informer

A lesson in what happens when there is an unwillingness to evolve or risk new ideas. [June 2005, p.126]

GamerFeed

Reminded me of any given recent Steven Seagal film. Yeah, you'll have your guilty pleasure with it and like some moments of its over-the-top violence, but it really feels like the same old thing, like the after-effects of a good idea gone rather sour in production.

Electronic Gaming Monthly

What we have here is a title that tries hard to impress with its flash, yet stumbles over fundamentally busted gameplay. [June 2005, p.99]

Play Magazine

Takes the action-shooter genre and shoves it straight through the Blanderizer 6235 to ensure any sense of novelty possibly contained therein meets is brutal end. [May 2005, p.50]

Gaming Age

A bit of the same old song and dance provided by most shooter games on the market.

games(TM)

Contrived shooter with little to no depth... This is as generic as they come. [July 2005, p.122]

AceGamez

It's almost as if the developers of Dead to Rights II decided to rip out the fun factor that flowed freely through the original, leaving an empty shell of a frustrating and quite dreadful product.

Computer Games Magazine

On the easier levels, it's a silly exercise in mashing buttons to spew ammo throughout a world of bad physics, cheap animation, and tinny sound. [June 2005, p.90]

GameSpy

All things considered, it's probably a blessing that Dead To Rights II is a short game. Most players will easily nail the coffin shut in a weekend.

GameCritics

It's not especially big, but the tedium of the action makes it feel overlong. The lack of variety in enemies and gameplay make it feel almost like a budget title.

Edge Magazine

We’ve a right to enjoy this kind of brainless, murderous throwback, but we’ve also a right to expect it to be made to the standards of videogames of five years ago, never mind those of today. [July 2005, p.91]

Game Revolution

It manages to stumble all over itself from the second you turn it on and never manages to recover. Simple control functions are handled clumsily, changing weapons is a chore and someone actually thought the dumb melee-exclusive levels would be a good idea. Like the rest of this stinker, it is not.